Tacitus, Annals, 15.20­-23, 33­-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, and Commentary, 2013a

His (and Nero’s) assimilation of destruction of Rome to the destruction of
Troy invokes a cyclical notion of history at variance with Virgilian teleology,
the phoenix rising from the ashes being reduced to it. But whereas Scipio
simply ponders the ephemeral nature of human achievement at the moment
of his greatest triumph, Nero’s Trojan reminiscences, especially as represented
by Tacitus in the Annals, are more specific. Nero undoes the achievement of his
ancestors, in particular Augustus; under his reign the success story of Julio(-
Claudian) Rome that Virgil celebrated in the Aeneid unravels; he destroys the
Virgilian masterplot by reducing Rome to its origins: the ashes of Troy. And he
sings about it. What Nero does in verse, Tacitus does in prose. By taking his
inspiration from the emperor and casting the Neronian fire in terms of a city
sacked in his own narrative, arguably in oblique dialogue with the ‘Fiendfyre’
of Aeneid 2, he positions himself as an ideological antipode to Virgil’s Aeneid. If
in Virgil the fall of Troy heralds the beginning of Rome and the inauguration of
a history that has its positive end in Caesar and Augustus, i.e. the beginning of
the Julian dynasty, in Tacitus the fire of Rome under Nero turns into a negative
end to history, in which the new foundation that emerged from the ashes of
Troy and found its culmination in Augustan Rome is itself reduced to rubble
by the last representative of the Julio-Claudian lineage.
Chapter 38
Chapter 38 offers ‘a splendid study of the chaos produced by calamity, and of
the human suffering involved.’ 162 Watch Tacitus keep his camera constantly on
the move across different groups, using different signifiers for this purpose:
quique, alii, pars, quidam, multi etc. This creates a complex and kaleidoscopic
picture, with constant and varied activity all over his canvass. Key themes
include: (i) The variety of constructions, complex syntax and winding sentences,
evoking confusion; (ii) Personification of the fire, especially presentation of it as
an invading army; (iii) Snapshot, impressionistic looks at different groups here
and there; (iv) Moments of pathos and human suffering; (v) Speed of narrative
and the progression of the fire. The structure of the opening paragraph is:
38.1: Introduction and general significance
38.2: Outbreak and causes
38.3: Power of the flames
38.4–7: The humans affected
162 Miller (1975) 90.